Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s largest shareholder John Paulson and his associated investment funds will be cashing out another couple of pieces of his investment. The recently announced $300 million in stock repurchases announced by the board apparently includes a deal to buy $150 million of stock directly from Paulson’s companies. The price per share for that side agreement is pegged to a secondary offering to the public of additional shares controlled by Paulson. That prospectus, just filed with the SEC, proposes selling up to roughly 12.16 million shares — or about 8.5 percent of shares outstanding. As with the first public offering of […]
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KDP Fund for February: Down Slightly Overall, Up Slightly Per Book
In their monthly retroactive declaration of how much KDP Select authors earned from Kindle Unlimited borrows for February, Amazon financed a total pool of $8 million — down from $8.5 million allocated in January. That’s the first time Amazon has reduced the monthly pool. The fee paid per borrow rose slightly, however, to $1.4066 per book — compared to just under $1.38 for January. That means overall borrows declined from about 6.175 million in January to 6.043 million in February. Needless to say, authors will be watching closely to see if this is a one-month aberration, or if monthly borrows have […]
Amazon and Hachette Finalize New Contract
Hachette Book Group and Amazon announced jointly on Thursday morning that “the companies have reached a new, multi-year agreement for ebook and print sales in the US.” HBG ceo Michael Pietsch said, “This is great news for writers. The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come. It gives Hachette enormous marketing capability with one of our most important bookselling partners.” Echoing the etailer’s comment on the recent Simon & Schuster contract, Kindle vp David Naggar said in the statement: “We are pleased with this new agreement as it includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we […]
Harper Germany to Launch In 2015; Will Publish Silva In 16 Territories
HarperCollins is creating a HarperCollins Germany publishing program, expanding on the operation in Hamburg acquired as part of their purchase of Harlequin and launching in fall 2015 with approximately 50 Harper branded titles. The German initiative is itself just a first step, as Harper plans to take those 50 titles and others to in Japan, Sweden, Holland and Spain “in the coming months,” with more territories also in process. “In the markets where we own 100 percent of the [Harlequin] companies we’ll go very quickly,” says ceo Brian Murray. The Harlequin units operate as joint ventures in France, Italy and Brazil, where “there’s […]
Russo Writes to Authors Guild Members On Amazon
The Authors Guild distributed to members on Thursday a letter from novelist and AG vice president Richard Russo. It expands on remarks made by association president Roxana Robinson earlier in the week: “On Tuesday, Amazon made an offer to Hachette Book Group that would ‘take authors out of the middle’ of their ongoing dispute by offering Hachette authors windfall royalties on e-books until the dispute between the companies is resolved. While Amazon claims to be concerned about the fate of mid-list and debut authors, we believe their offer—the majority of which Hachette would essentially fund—is highly disingenuous. For one thing, it’s impossible […]
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Charles Watkinson joined the University of Michigan Library on July 1 as associate university librarian for publishing and director of the University of Michigan Press. Most recently he was head of scholarly publishing services and director of Purdue University Press. At Macmillan, Ruth Esehak-Gillespie has been promoted to international sales and marketing manager. At Harper UK, Natalie Jerome has been promoted to nonfiction publisher. Ann Lawson has been hired as head of Publishing Technology’s ingentaconnect division. She was at EBSCO Information Services, most recently as senior director. At Harlequin, Erika Imranyi has been promoted to executive editor, Mira. Co-founder of The […]